I’ve been following this conversation with interest and rejoin it now, as always, with too little time and too little art.
Be that as it may, I’ll try to limit my focus to this, which jumped at me:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by Aiwendil
As I said before, I think that "On Faery Stories" and the rest of his literary theory can be understood quite well with "truth" meaning simply "the set of true propositions"
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I – with respect – quite disagree with this.
Throughout “On Fairy-Stories”, Tolkien refers to “profound truths”, to “permanent and fundamental things”, to “underlying reality or truth”, to “Joy beyond the walls of the world” (capitalization Tolkien’s), to the “notes of the horns of Elfland”, which loudly proclaim certain moral truths. He likens “this fallen world” to a prison, and glorifies “escape” (via Fairy-Story) as a going home. To where? He says that “the maddest castle that ever came out of a giant's bag in a wild Gaelic story is not only much less ugly than a robot-factory, it is also (to use a very modern phrase) ‘in a very real sense’ a great deal more real.”
What does he mean by these things? A castle from a giant’s bag in a story more “real” than a factory?
Surely he means more than “the set of true propositions” about the world: 2+2=4, the earth is round, and so forth. Unless I mistake what you mean by “set of true propositions” – which I take to be limited solely to rational, provable, indisputable, factual propositions – Tolkien is talking about something far more abstract, something which is, indeed, transcendental. Truth beyond mere factual truth.
This sort of truth – Truth – resists pat definitions or pithy catchphrases. Whole lifetimes may be spent in search of its many facets, or in an effort to live in accord with it. It is, to steal Tolkien’s words, “incalculably rich”. There’s a reason for talk of “glimpses” and “windows” and “through a glass darkly”. To trace it back to God and Heaven doesn’t help much, since I think most would agree that these are only other names for great and incomprehensible mysteries which are never to be fully apprehended in this world, even if you believe in such things. Unless I am much mistaken, I think that Helen, davem, H-I, and others on the “spiritual” side of the debate would agree that Truth is something to be sought after with humility, not imposed on others through tyranny.
Yet both science and psychology allow room for the mysterious, and here we, perhaps, may find some common ground, for surely none of us are so naïve as to think that the workings of nature have been plumbed by science, nor all the motives of the human mind and heart charted and explained by psychologists. As Shakespeare put it, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
Quote:
Aiwendil:
I think that The Lord of the Rings is an immensely powerful and deeply satisfying work of art; I think it's one of the greatest achievements of the human mind.
Bethberry:
I have felt great, overwhelming grief at parts of his work, grief that brought me to my knees (metaphorically speaking)
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Whence comes this power? It is there, I think, where we may find the most meaningful common ground.
BTW,
davem, I think it was Blaise Pascal who apologized for the long letter, because he had “not had time to make it shorter.” In defiance of Pascal, one last point:
Fordim, I think your Nazgûl/Fellowship analogy has finally worn out its welcome once and for all, because it leaves no middle-ground: neither reader nor author ascendant, but reader and author as accomplices, co-conspirators as it were. I cannot say it better than Tolkien, from “On Fairy-Stories” which I reread this morning for the sake of this thread: “Uncorrupted, it [Fantasy] does not seek delusion nor bewitchment and domination; it seeks shared enrichment, partners in making and delight, not slaves.”
NOTE: Cross-posting with davem has resulted in a bit of redundancy. For that I apologize.